The Centre for Modern Thought

Just a quick heads-up that the room for our seminar this week is 028 MacRobert. See you there!

Some of you are actively interested in the History of Science and, more concretely, in the History of Experimental Science. I have good news for you. I recently found the Journal of Visualized Experiments, a website with loads of micro-documentaries on real experiments and laboratory methodology.

I would dare to say that its approach to scientific publishing is completely new, and JoVE is the first Journal of its kind in Pubmed. They expressed their ideas much better than me. I quote directly from their website: Read more ...

We have two very exciting events this coming Monday — a talk by Danielle Cohen-Levinas and, a little later in the day, a concert by Michaël Levinas. The details, in order:

Under the auspices of the Centre for Modern Thought and the Sutherland Bequest, Danielle Cohen-Levinas will give a talk on Monday 27th October 2008 at 3pm, at the Kings College Chapel:

“Levinas et Derrida: politique de l’indéconstructible”

All are welcome. From there, we’ll go to a reception at Elphinstone Hall on the University of Aberdeen campus at 5.00 pm, with refreshments. Read more ...

(Below is Oteiza’s Caja metafisica (1958).)

As a follow up to Nerea’s exciting announcement of the Oteiza workshop, I’m uploading the Word document for the workshop, including further details about the event and links to more on Oteiza.

A Two-Day Workshop on Jorge Oteiza’s Radical Thought organised by Centre for Modern Thought and Hispanic Studies

Jorge Oteiza (1908–2003) is one of the key Spanish artists of the 20th century. His theoretical writings explore the connections between art and life ⎯more specifically the spiritual dimension of art and the political role of the artist. A few years before the publication of his most influential text “Quousque tandem…!” (1963) Oteiza had already decided to cease creating rather than to repeatedly reproduce what he considered to be the formal conclusion of his artistic experimentation, the work which had won him the top prize for sculpture in the 1957 Sao Paolo Biennial. Read more ...

I’ve put up the new page for our fall ‘08 seminar (Thursdays, 3.30-5.30, location TBA). Check it out for a description of the class and outline of the coming weeks.

I have written a pdf explaining how to post a forum topic. I hope it will be useful.

Please, write a comment to this post if there are more problems.

Dear Friends:

This is to announce the upcoming “Modalities of Imperial Reason.  A Workshop on Comparative Imperial History.”  It will take place at the University of Aberdeen on 23-24 June.  Participants, which include, from the Aberdeen side, Edith Doron, Danny James, Aday Jimenez, Alberto Moreiras, Nick Nesbitt, Michael Syrotinski, and Trevor Stack, and from elsewhere Jon Beasley-Murray, Bruno Bosteels, Patrick Dove, John Kraniauskas, Benjamin Mayer, Antonio Rivera, Jose Luis Villacanas, and Gareth Williams, will present a short position paper on any aspect of the general topic they choose.  In addition, we will discuss two recent books, one by Herfried Munkler entitled _Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States_ and another from Jose Luis Villacanas entitled _?Que imperio?_.  Anybody interested in participating or attending should let me know.  A full programme will be posted later on. 

All the very best,

Alberto

(Since it came up in The Exploit and in our seminar discussion, I thought I’d post the full text here.)

Postscript on the Societies of Control

Gilles Deleuze

( I. historical / II. logic / III. program )

I. Historical

Foucault located the disciplinary societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they reach their height at the outset of the twentieth. They initiate the organization of vast spaces of enclosure. Read more ...

I have been thinking about Dr Galloway’s Alternative Algorithms, particularly in relation to two of my obsessions in theoretical computer science: the P versus NP problem , and quantum computers. Here, I will try to improvise very quickly some ideas, simplifying or excluding some of the mathematical technicalities. Read more ...